General Questions

Below are some common questions that new users of Planful for Marketing may have:

What is the difference between the “Create” and “Manage” bars?

Answer:  Planful for Marketing explicitly separates the process of creating new objects such as expenses and campaigns, vs. managing existing objects.

Can we export information into Excel? 

Answer: Yes, you can export data in CSV format from various sections of our platform. This includes the Spending Timeline, Budget Hierarchy, Spend by Expense Type, as well as the Manage Expenses and Manage Campaigns pages when viewing data in table format. You can also filter the data based on specific variables before exporting it.

What are “Shared Cost Rules” (e.g. what is the use case)?

Answer: Some expenses are for activities, services, or goods that may benefit multiple budget segments and your organization wants each segment to contribute a certain amount.  If we didn’t have shared cost rules, an expense would need to be manually broken down into multiple expenses assigned to a segment which could be confusing.  The shared cost rule automates that process by splitting the expense according to a defined rule. Creating and using a Shared Cost Rule,  determined by administrators of the account.

Is there a way to create email notifications to remind team members of outstanding tasks?

Answer: Planful for Marketing does not currently support email notification functionality, but this capability is on our product roadmap! If this is an important feature for you and/or your team, please document a feature request in the support chat in the bottom right corner of your Planful for Marketing instance! 

How do currencies work in the system?  Are individuals planning in local currency and are we applying the exchange rate in the system?  

Answer: Every Planful for Marketing account has a base currency that is determined at the beginning of your implementation. Individual expenses may be planned and recorded in other currencies, but they will always be converted back to your base currency when compared to various budgets in your account. If you would like to set a fixed currency rate for a given currency and given month, Planful for Marketing  Admins can make this change in the "settings wheel" and then the "currencies" tab.